For the comparison between the predicted and the associations
of human subjects we have used the association norms collected
by Russell & Jenkins (Jenkins, 1970). They have the advantage
that translations of the stimulus words were also given to
German subjects (Russell & Meseck, 1959, and Russell, 1970)
so that our model could be tested for English as well as for
German.

The Russell & Jenkins association norms, also referred to
as the Minnesota word association norms, were collected
in 1952. The 100 stimulus words from the Kent-Rosanoff word
association test (Kent & Rosanoff, 1910) were presented to
1008 students of two large
introductory psychology classes at the University of Minnesota.
The subjects were instructed, to write after each word
``the first word that it makes you think of''.
Seven years later, Russell & Meseck (1959) repeated the
same experiment in Germany with a carefully translated list
of the stimulus words. The subjects were 331 students and pupils
from the area near Würzburg. The quantitative results reported on
later will be based on comparisons with these norms.

The American as well as the German association norms were
collected more than 30 years ago. The texts which were used
to simulate these associations are more recent. One might expect
therefore that this discrepancy will impair the agreement between
the observed and the predicted responses. Better predictions might
be attained if the observed associations had been produced by the
same subjects as the texts from which the predictions are computed.
However, such a procedure is hardly realizable, and our results will
show that despite these discrepancies associations to common words can
be predicted successfully.